“Symbian simply has got to go”
Link: SMS Text News » Archives » Who bought a UK Apple iPhone?
An interesting point made by Heavylight on the above linked post. Mike’s just got himself a UK iPhone and posted a quick analysis of his experience — this text here caught SMS Text News reader Heavylight’s attention:
The iPhone starts downloading immediately, while the N95 has the Symbian bollocks of ‘Do you really want to download data? Now pick your access point, even though we know and you know there’s only one F**ker defined in the handset anyway’)
He responded with this:
For me, that’s the biggest, ugliest sign that Symbian simply has to go!
(Closely followed by the lack of font control; two almost useless browers; and the completely inadequate task manager.)
Thanks for venting — it made me feel better too!
What’s the future for Symbian when devices like the iPhone are providing such different (and better?) user experiences *right now*?
(Let’s not mention the gPhone OS…)
The OS should not get in the way. Symbian does, due to either arrogance (we know best) or incompetence (we didn’t foresee flat rate data or WiFi coming). Hopefully they can / will react. Or OSX and Linux will render them irrelevant.
Posted by Mike on November 13th, 2007 at 11:52 am.Moaning like this should be put in context. Symbian is the market leader by a long way. It doesn’t get to that position by being completely crap. Yes some of the consumer stuff makes me what to scream, but there’s a whole set of things at all levels that make an OS good or bad (e.g. is it good for developers, is it cheap to make phones for manufacturers, is it easy for operators to launch services on). You have to also consider the mass market viewpoint (rather they think from their technically literate viewpoint which is a minority) and/or don’t understand commercial realities.
This doesn’t invalidate the criticism of course, its just what you read as a result of it that’s the problem.
And it is never that simple (and as noted in the original comments you can set default access points) - e.g. for the particular point above - the normal person [normob in SMS Text News language] probably doesn’t use WiFI. Why would they when 3G data is available? They’ll have the operator access pint set as the default when they buy from the shop and away they go. Moreover there are solutions that let you use just one access point, but they are mainly aimed / marketed to Enterprise users, who may actually be in the situation to use them.
By contrast the iPhone is a fashion/ boutique device (or to be nicer about it - its a media consumption device with a phone added as an extra - most people need this the other way round - phone first), that has a limited set of functionality and some brilliant user experience (music) and some horrendous user experience in places too (e.g. choosing a contact and making a call). A good user experience around media consumption does not transfer into a good phone experience.
Posted by Rafe on November 13th, 2007 at 1:49 pm.Of course the mini-rants were over-simplifications and were only focusing on one tiny (tho’ arguably the most important) aspect of the OS, ie. the consumers’ experience. Symbian has become the market leader by ’selling’ it’s software to the handset manufacturers by the million with virtually no contact with end-users — exactly the way Microsoft became flabby and lazy years back.
Is S60 ‘good for developers’?
From what I’ve read it’s hardly an ‘easy’ OS for building applications and the signing process sounds cumbersome and expensive. Isn’t the chief attraction the huge captive userbase?
And at around $5 per unit, I’m not sure Nokia would say that it’s cheap either.
I’m not exactly a normob (longtime PC fanatic) but I still can’t get my E65 to default to 3G, or automatically process the APs in my one and only AP group. (But mysteriously almost, the X-Series Skype client automagically connects to 3G without a hitch.) Until the UI is a normob no-brainer(TM), smartphones [sic] will remain the preserve of the techy few.
While I’m on a roll, just *how* did Symbian / Nokia release the ground-breaking N95 with so many software faults; *why* did it take 9 months to upgrade the E65 firmware; and what’s the reason that I can’t upgrade to S60 FP1?
What on earth are they doing with their close-on $200 million revenue?
John Forsyth’s comments regarding Google / OMA’s Android [sorry Ewan, as a potential Symbian-killer, it *has* to be mentioned] came across to me as both blind and arrogant.
I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll be eating his words in a year’s time.
I thought it was just me that found S60 infuriatingly clumsy but it’s not.
Hell, even SymbianOne concludes: “After all the last thing the smartphone market needs is a de-facto monopoly OS: We have that in the PC market and look where that has got us.”
I’m almost tempted to learn Java…
Posted by HeavyLight on November 13th, 2007 at 4:28 pm.“Symbian is the market leader by a long way”
Er…not overall. No way. Smartphones maybe, but in the context of 3Bn devices? and it only got there by being moderately_less_crap than everyone else.
And normal people do use WiFi. In spades. Much more than 3G. 3 million WiFi AP’s in the UK and growing. Just right now, they are using it on laptops. But as The Cloud has spotted, if they already understand it and understand the user experience (Free, Fast, Easy) then promoting using WiFi to connect mobile devices is much less of a consumer perception stretch than re-educating people that 3G is now also Free, Fast and Easy. Try teaching people they won’t get ripped off roaming in Estonia….
The minor omissions in functionality (multiple-recipient SMS or no video recording (yet) for example) are waaaaaaaaay offset by the richness/ease of the rest of the experience. If you are calling the phone experience ‘horrendous’ I can only assume you haven’t been using one as your only mobile for the last 3 weeks. I have the choice of any device I like, and the iPhone wins - just as a phone, let alone oall the other fruit. Case in point: it takes me 5 button presses to find and call my ‘non-favourited’ colleague William P on the iPhone, as opposed to 15 presses on a S60 device. Multiple call handling is a breeze too.
If my 3 year old can use it (as she did last night), it wins.
(funnily enough, she can’t use a Symbian device).
(I’m no Apple fanboi. I just know what works and what I like)
Posted by Mike on November 13th, 2007 at 4:34 pm.